With the surge in popularity of purchasing products, such as heavy duty liquid laundry detergent, in bulk in retail outlets such as grocery stores, drug stores and especially so-called “club” stores, packaging for bulk items has become highly desired. One such type of package that has become popular is a container for heavy duty laundry detergent such as that shown in U.S. Pat. No. D470,054 to Gerhart et al. That package is a 300 fl. oz. size container which includes one or more top walls having a vent opening and closure, a handle, spigot for dispensing product, and a measuring cap which encloses the spigot.
While this package has been well received by the industry including manufacturers, retailers and consumers, a disadvantage is that it requires a large amount of headspace such that when the container is placed on its front wall during use, the product level is not higher than the bottom most of the vent opening since venting of the container requires partial unscrewing of the vent cap. If the product level was higher than the bottom most level of the vent opening, the product would spill out of the package through the vent opening. Thus, the container can in use hold much less than its actual volume. With the relatively large size of these containers it is preferable to be able to make better use of the actual volume of the container rather than make another larger container larger since a larger container is more cumbersome for the consumer to carry and larger containers require more shelf space in the store, use more plastic and cost more, as well as use more space and more secondary packaging during distribution to the retail outlets.
Accordingly, for such types of containers with a vent, there exists a need for a vent closure that enables more of the actual volume of the container to be used. In other words, there exists a need for such a container with a vent closure which enables the container to have less headspace.
An object of the present invention is to provide a venting closure that reduces the amount of headspace, thus enabling more of the actual volume of the container to be used.
Other objects of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art by reference to the specification.